"But in the end, making lots of accurate predictions isn't necessarily the job of the futurist. It's more the act of stimulating creative thought about the future that, in turn, influences how we act today.

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"At the Toronto [World Future Society] conference, veteran futurist Joseph Coates put it this way: "Being right or wrong isn't so much the point as being useful. The ultimate purpose is to change people's minds."

"Or as Kenneth Boulding, an influential 20th century futurist, once said: 'The future will always surprise us, but we must not let it dumbfound us.'" — Michael Rogers, writing in MSNBC